FARMING ECONOMICS.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XVII, Issue 1350, 16 November 1860, Page 5

FARMING ECONOMICS.

Irrigated Italian Bye-G-bass. — The great aim of the farmer should be to make one acre produce as much M five — thus diminishing, by four-fifths, his rent, rates, tithes, horse-labour, seed and other expenses — such as distance of carting, gates, hedges, head-lands, &c. Of course this cannot be done with corn crops, but with Italian Rye-grass it can. be done ; and, to some extent, also with root, Grass, and leguminous crops. I have an 8-acre field of Italian Rye grass, which, from its first cutting, yields 190 lbs. per rod — being more than 134 torn per acre ; or, it made into hay, about 4 tons 17 cwt. Italian Rye-grass contains, when green, 75 per cent, of water ; when made into hay, about 16 per cent. Ido not think it would be safe to reckon upon the 'whole produce stated above, because the crop may somewhat vary in places. I have reason, however, to believe that the first cut from the Edinburgh Meadows, on which the town sewage flows, will be, this spring, quite 20 tons the Scotch — or 16 tons the English — acre, and I can easily understand how Mr. Telfer pro duced 80 tons per Scotch acre of Italian Rye-grass — equal to nearly 25 tons of hay. I would recommend, before my farming friends express their doubt and disbelief, that they will try the same means on some small portions of their own land, and then come armed with their results. I will now state how the field was treated on which my Rye-grass is growing :— 1856 — Mangel. A heavy crop. 1857— Wheat. Ditto. 1858 — Beam. 6 qrs. per acre. 1859— "Wheat. Nearly 7 qrs. per acre. The Italian Rye-grass was purchased of Mr. Dickin■on, ai uiual, sown with the seed barrow at the rate of 3 bushels per acre on the growing Wheat, in the spring of 1 859, and hoed-in at the last hoeing. When the , Wheat was harve»ted it was scarcely visible — being as fine as needles ; but having lost its oppressor — the Wheat— 'it soon grew, and gave good autumn feed. I did not .irrigate it, being' desirous to keep it backward, having ' another forward field. This spring' I sowed upon it 2 owt. Peruvian guano, mixed with 1 cwt. of fishery salt, and washed it in with an abundance of diluted liquid, from my great tank, at the rate of 20,000 gallon* per acre. The effect was almost magical. In a fortnight it' branched, thickened, and lengthened, until hut week, I cut from 1 iquare pole or rod 190 lbs. weight. i . , On iix land* I omitted the guano; the result, although irrigated, like the reit, showed a deficiency of nearly one half as compared with that which had been guanoed. I have treated another field the same way for sheep and cow feeding, and the result has been extraordinary. -The fact is, the guano pays admirably, and 1 1 shall. never irrigate without previously sowing it ; and after every cutting I did this in 1855, and kept 100 sheep constantly on 6 acres, from April to October. That field has «nee carried a Pea and Turnip crop, a Wheat crop,' two Barley crops, and a white Clover crop for iced/ which produced hut year 10 guineas per acre, "and now there is a fine crop of Tares for seed. The fact is, when yon Rye-gran a field for two years, and produce, by, irrigation and high manuring, such an enormous .growth) tho subterranean roots are correspondingly multiplied, and' the «oil and sub-soil deeply fertiliied by the filtration through them of iuch abundant •upplie* of manure— -the roott running down abundantly 'into the sub-noil, which has been enriched and aerated. Of course the land must be deeply drained. See how ■mall W piece' will supply a farm horse daily. 100 lbi. of green Italian Rye-grass will contain 25 lbs. of dry matter, and he probably will not be able to consume more thin 112 lot. in the 24 hours. Mine have no corn, and are in first-rate condition with this quantity. I assume, of course, that you do not allow your horseman to waste it under the horses'_ feet; but that it is all .eaten, <I<hope*that we shall soon hear no more of farm> 'h'ortes! consuming* annually,' ihe produce of Jive acres — eating up, in fact, nearly one-fourth of- tho-farmer'i acreage On tbii plan one aore will be _n ewer than five,

for a horse cannot consume more than|oiie rod i c • da — or 160 days o» one acre, for the first out. I thin I.see Bomo of my friends on the poor, stiff, undraine clays opening their eyes rather wide at this statemen with another indignant disbelief of that Mr. Mechi but facts are stubborn things, and I.must admit th« it must be hard for the fanners of poor worn-out, coarc pastures to believe in suoh things. I intend to go in fc much larger results, by washing in 4 or 5 cwts. ( guano after each cutting (mixed, of course, with salt The principal difficulty with this crop i* to cope wit the, seasons, and adapt consumption to pioductiot Heavy supplies of rain, such as we have recently h»i cause such a flush, especially of the first cut, that must at once cut 6 acres and make it into hay ; olthbug I have 150 sheep, 20 bullocks, 8 cows, 20 small calves nnd',6 farm horses all consuming it. I grow this ye« 15 acres, and average about 10 acres. If the hay i to be palatable and nutritious, we must take care to cv it early, and cart it rather green. If full seeded it wil lose quality, and' become hard and strawy. It will ben stacking in a more crude state than ordinary GrasE There is a peculiarity about Italian Rye-grass. It wil never scour any animal, however green or wet it ma; be ; and in this respect compares most favourably witi Tares. It has excellent fattening properties. Wher you can irrigate, it is truly beneficial, but without irri gation you have no chance after the first spring cut Broad-leaf plants succeed admirably after it— such a Beans on heavy land, Peas on light hind ; or you ma; take Rape before the "Wheat. It is desirable to breai it up the second year in September, or early in October If you take Wheat immediately i^er it you shoulc plough in 5 cwt. of Rape cake, which will kill all th< wire worm, and prevent the destruction of your crop If farmers would bring all their drainage and buildings water into one groat reservoir they might get watei enough to irrigate a few acres of this Grass, whicl would be most'useful and profitable to them. Bullocki will fatten well upon the Italian Rye-grass without anj other food, although 1 always prefer adding Rape c*ke, for obvious reasons. In conclusion, if our clays and other lands, wher drained and improved, can be made to produce even 3( to 40 tons of this Grass per acre, what an immense increase of meat and manure we might make. Ii Mangel is worth for consumption 10s. per ton, Italiai Rye-grass is certainly worth 20s, per ton in its green state, eeeing that it contains 25 par cent, of dry matter, while Mangel only contains ] 2 per cent. Is it noi worth while (as Mr. Telfer did) to put on a ton of guanoj at four dressings annually, to produce £40 or £50 worth of food and manure ? Let the landlords and tenants ol the millions of acres of miserable, worn-out, unimproved, rough Grass lands ponder well on this statement, and draw their own conclusions ; and let om Boards of Health and Sanitary Reformers weigh the individual and national benefit which would result to the country if the town sewage were applied to this crop. I need hardly say that if I had access to town sewage, like Lord Essex, I should save the cost oi guano. I hear that several of the Scotch meadows were let this spring by public auction at £35 to £ii rent for one year's Grass on one imperial acre ! Professor Way's analysis gives in 100 parts dried at 212°:— 10.10 Albuminous, or flesh forming principles. 3.27 Fatty matters. 57.82 Heat -forming principles (starch, gum, sugar, &c.) 19.76 Woody fibre. 9.05 Mineral matters, or ash. 100.00 I presume the "irrigated" Italian would (like the irrigated meadow Grasses) give even more favourable results. — See Way on "Nutritive Matter of Grasses,'' " Royal Agricultural Society's Journal," vol. 14, p. 180. I need not dilate upon the necessity for procuring the best and heaviest clean seed, when we see, by Professor Buckirum's examination at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, that it is no uncommon thing to get from 500,000 to 1,100,000 weed seeds in a bushel of seed weighing 14 to 18 lbs. Clean good seed should weigh 18 lbs. Very deep cultivation, and ample manure deeply buried, are excellent preparatives for Italian Rye-grass. I almost always sow mine upon ft growing Wheat crop. J. J. Mechi, Tiptiee, July 23. P.S. — My second crop of Italian Rye-grass, which ia now being mowed for home consumption, is quite a yard long, and must be certainly, 13 to 14 tons per acre. My greatest difficulty in irrigation has been with the 200 yards of moveable or flexible hose. Guttapercha (which is still the best) is ' apt to knuckle, and also to melt, if left empty on a hot day. I paint it white to prevent this. I have tried for a year, a sandwich of Btrong canvas between two layers of vulcanised India rubber. This promised to be most durable, and perfectly successful ; but, after a time (owing, I presume, ta some chemical action), the liquid foupd its wav through the canvas, rendered it rotten, and thus destroyed the pipes. T hope shortly to try Jaloureauv & Co.'s paper pipes. The powers of irrigation are, I think, by no means sufficiently appreciated. Our chemists give us the value of all the elements of manuie, but omit to state the great fact that without water they are worthless as food for plants. Vain is the application of guano, without a shower, natural or artificial, to wash it into the soil and subsoil. What value, then, will chemistry put upon a jet-fall or artificial shower equal to a rainfall of 1 inch, which would be 100 tons of water pei acre, deposited at the right time ' The effect of a heavj shower in the warm days of May or June is like magic on the growth of plants ; no manure, however strong or costly, would effect this without water. Water is, in fact, the only carrier of heat downwards. The hot soil is robbed of its heat by the rain-fall, which, percolating on drained soil through the cold subsoil, imparts to it its heat, and is thus lobbr ' of its caloric en passant. The natural heat of the subsoil is, at 4 feet deep, only 4G ° ; while the surface, on a hot summer's day, attains a temperature of ]20° to 130 ° . The amount oi increased heat thus imparted to the subsoil has It«i hotbed like influence on the growth of plants. Besides this, water performs many and various good offices and chemical agencies in the subsoil. The enormous rainfalls of the Tropics (often 144 inches per annum), combined with great »olar heat, produce rapidly-grown and astonishing masses of vegetation.